Scissorina

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September 30, 2007

Back in Business

So, I'm back from Cali and was back at work mid-week. Between being sick and playing catch up at the office, I'm just getting caught up with "me" stuff. (Like sleep, laundry, doing dishes, blogging. Okay - so I haven't gotten to the laundry yet.)

Cali was fantastic. SteveKam and I woke up at 4am a couple of Saturdays ago and made our way to our plane, where we joined our friends Dan and Tara for a lovely 6 hour flight cross country.

We spent our first evening in San Jose, visiting with SteveKam's brother Dave and his fiancee Nina. They were both super nice and despite a wicked case of jet lag late in the evening, we had a blast hanging out and playing video games with them.

Dave has made his garage into an arcade. AN ARCADE.

The next day we drove up to Palo Alto for lunch with my BFF, Danielle. She took a break from her crazy busy life as a first year res at Stanford to have a margarita and some tacos with us. It was great to see her - she looks fantastic! California is definitely agreeing with her. I've never seen someone who's working 80 hours a week look so good!

After lunch, SteveKam and I climbed back into our rental (we had a Kia and I loved that sucker!) and made our way up to Healdsburg to meet up with the rest of the gang for our Wine Country adventure. And what a few days we had up there! I fell in love with that part of the state... I had never spent any real time in that area, so it was a real treat for me! We spent Monday touring wineries in the Dry Creek area in Sonoma County. Again... I'd never been wine tasting, so this was new. :) I could reeeeally get used to spending my weekends this way.

On Tuesday, a couple of the braver gals joined me for a trip to Calistoga for mud baths at Doctor Wilkinson's. This was an EXPERIENCE. It was amazing. When you walk into the bath area in the back, you feel like you've traveled back to 1955. You spend the next 3 hours naked. In mud, in a mineral bath, in a steam room, in a big blanket, and then finally during a 30 minute massage. Again... I could get used to this. I think everyone should give this a go! I can't wait until I'm back in Cali to get another tub.

Tuesday was one of my very favorite days of the trip... After the mud bath, I took a nap with SteveKam for about an hour and then we walked around taking pictures before dinner.

My favorite photo of SteveKam ever.

Dinner was an amazing cookout at the house and the wine flowed freely. 80's music was blasted and dancing ensued. You can follow the evening's events through the eyes of a certain dinner guest here.

The next morning, my fella and I left lovely Healdsburg (*sniff sniff*) and headed down to San Francisco for a day in the city! We spent most of our time on Fisherman's Wharf ogling the sea lions at Pier 39. We grabbed lunch and did a little shopping, before taking a nice long walk through Chinatown to hit Artfibers before it closed. (Have I mentioned how awesome my boyfriend is? He went to a yarn shop with me! And he didn't even mind! Sigh.) We had a nice dinner in Little Italy and hit the sack early - all that walking took it out of us!

We woke up bright and early on Thursday to start down the coast to Santa Cruz. We decided to drive down Route 1 so we could get our beach fix. :) We stopped like every 5 minutes. I loved it.

We ended up getting into Santa Cruz in the early afternoon and after checking in at the hotel and grabbing a bite, we decided to take a drive up to Big Basin State Park to see some big ol redwood trees. We had a great time feeling very small.

That night, we went out for sushi at a place called Pink Godzilla in Capitola. YUM. My favorite treat of the evening was roll with tuna, avocado and macadamia nuts. But my favorite part of the night? Watching SteveKam eat raw tuna for the first time! The verdict? "It's not bad. It's okay. Kinda weird." Good enough for me! I love the fact that he's always willing to experiment - even if he ends up hating it, who cares? A lot of people won't venture outside what they know, so it's a big deal to me that he's willing to try new things. Just hooray.

Well, hooray until later that evening.

I started feeling a little funny later that evening... but it was when I tried to go to bed that I really started to feel strange. My back was killing me and I started to have a tummy ache. As I lay there trying to fall asleep, my head started to pound.... Not good. But, I have a really sensitive stomach and when I travel, I often get wicked stomachaches and the like - especially when I spend a lot of time in the car. So, I chalked it up to travel and after a little discomfort, I was able to fall asleep.

The next morning? I tried to make it out to breakfast with my honey, but once I was in the car it was clear that it was going to be a no go. I felt TERRIBLE. My lower back was killing me and a fever came on fast and furious. I crawled back into the hotel bed as SteveKam told me that he thought I should go to the hospital. In typical Sarah fashion, I informed SteveKam that I was perfectly FINE and that I just needed to stay in bed and drink a lot of water and my "stomachache" would go away. I was determined not to ruin the last day in Cali for both of us. Bad enough that I would be in bed all day, I explained to him, no reason he should suffer the same fate. It took about an hour, but I finally forced him out the door so he could meet up with the guys for their big mountain bike adventure they had planned.

I spent the day moaning and rolling around the hotel bed. And not in the way I would have liked to - especially on vacation.

I managed to eat a salad at dinnertime and though I was slow moving, I thought for sure I was on the mend. Turns out I was wrong. I didn't sleep a wink Friday night and it was around 6am on Saturday when SteveKam was awoken for the gazillionth time by my flailing about when he said "That's it." After one more round of "I'll be fine.", I finally conceded that it was time to go to the hospital. I didn't feel good and it wasn't getting any better.

Well, good thing SteveKam finally wore me down. Turned out I had a kidney infection and was severely dehydrated. After a 3 hour visit to the ER, we were on our way, antibiotics in hand.

We missed our flight and JetBlue wouldn't help us out in any meaningful way. They wanted $400 to let us fly home the next day! Well, hindsight's 20/20 because if I knew then what I know now... I would have paid anything they wanted.

We took the red eye Saturday night and it was the worst ordeal of my life. I won't tell the whole sordid tale here, but let's just say that fainting, vomiting and vomiting post fainting were all involved. It was Hell. And poor SteveKam stayed awake the entire flight to make sure I didn't repeat the vomiting post fainting. It wasn't good.

It took my a few more days to get back on my feet. Honestly, today was the first time I really felt like myself again. Phew. But, after checking in with my regular doc a couple of times this week, I am finally in the clear! My kidney's all better and no one can tell my why it happened in the first place. It's a mystery.

But, no matter! I still rate the trip 9 stars out of 10. The good was so good that it made up for the terrible ending. I was nervous about taking a real vacation with SteveKam, as I've never travelled like that with a boyfriend before... But, he was the greatest traveling companion anyone could ever ask for. We had a blast together - but in the end, he carried my sick ass all the way from California to Connecticut. And continued to take care of me when we got back home. What can I even say? He was incredible and I owe him ... like a million.

It's all good. :)

The full array of vacation photos can be perused here if you are interested. Commentary is included. Tee hee.

Posted by Sarah at September 30, 2007 6:56 PM
Posted to getting trippy

Comments

Posted by: smack at October 2, 2007 11:50 AM

Posted by: smack at October 2, 2007 3:46 PM

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Posted by: smack at October 4, 2007 7:29 PM